by R P Nathan
After a month I was well enough to walk and use my arm freely. The Turks did not molest us in this time and, whether or not this is the truth, I believed it to be because of the intervention of the Turkish prince that we were left alone.
A further month passed and then I heard that a boat was sailing for Crete from one of the smaller ports and I crept upon it and was hid aboard with a Venetian family. We arrived safely in Crete and, two months after that, I was back in Venice.
Chapter 24
Summer 2002, London
Patrick
I was so pleased when Julius rang as it had been almost two weeks since I’d left the message on his answerphone. He’d apologised about not coming back to me sooner and though he hadn’t been too keen on going to the College reunion – which I understood completely – he did really want to meet up. And I said I thought that would be great and when I put the phone down I just felt really happy. Because Julius was my oldest friend.
He suggested we meet midweek at a pub called the Landsdowne. I got there a little early and bought myself a pint and sat at the bar and read my paper. It was really nice to be out of the office for once, drinking beer, eating olives and getting time to read something other than the business pages. And Julius was hardly late at all when he showed up and I just felt this great throb of happiness at seeing him again. We ended up sitting on a brown leather sofa in the corner.
“Can you believe it’s nearly a year since we actually met up?” he said. I groaned and started to apologise but he waved that away. “It’s no one’s fault. It’s just that life’s too busy. How’s accountancy treating you? You must be a partner now?”
“No,” I said grinning bashfully. “Well, almost. And what about you? How’s it going at the gallery?”
“Oh fine. My boss is an idiot but he let’s me do my own thing. And we’ve got a couple of exhibitions in the pipeline. One in Paris. One over here. You must come along. I’ll get you tickets for the opening.”
“Thanks,” I said impressed.
“That’s what friends are for. And how are your parents?”
I felt bliss enter me, engulf me, the soft brown leather of the sofa and the bar sound, conversation from fifty different people washing out in waves, lapping over me and most of all my oldest friend before me. Who asked about your parents these days? It was only those with the connections – the school friends, the university friends, the long rooted and deep entwined histories – they were the only ones who knew enough and cared enough to ask. “They’re fine,” I said my face flushed with simple happiness. “And yours?”
Connections. Points of contact. We sat and drank and talked, getting on to teachers at school like we always did, and it was just so easy and friendly and comforting that by the time we were being kicked out he was insisting that I should come over to his place for Sunday lunch because there was still loads we had to catch up on. And I said yes, definitely, and the knowledge that I would see him again in just a few days meant more to me than I could possibly say.
◆◆◆
The following day I sat in my office and sighed. It had been a long morning after the long evening of drinking and now in the early afternoon I felt drowsy and heavy and thought maybe I should have gone out to see a client rather than attempt to review accounts. But there I was stuck in the office and I forced myself to concentrate for the nth time as I stared at the draft papers before me, the numbers and words merging, swimming together.
There was a knock at the door and John poked his head in holding up a black lever arch file. I beckoned him into the room grateful for the distraction.
“I’ve made those changes you asked for,” he said, handing me the binder.
“Oh brilliant. Thanks, John.”
He smiled wanly and turned to go.
“I met up with Julius last night.”
He looked round with narrowed eyes. “God. I haven’t heard that name for a while.” His face relaxed into blank neutrality. “When did you last see him?”
“Almost a year ago. It was great to catch up.”
“Well, you two always were pretty close.”
“I guess so. I’m going over to his place for lunch on Sunday if you want to come along.”
“I can’t,” he said briskly. “I’ve got to do some revision this weekend. My exams are coming up soon.”
“These are your finals?” I whistled. “It seems mad you’re still doing them.”
He shrugged. “Still doing them. You’re pushing partner and I’m still trying to qualify.”
“Oh I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean it like that. And they’ll be finished in no time, you’ll see.” I nodded at him reassuringly. “Well, what about the College reunion? Have you made up your mind about that yet?”
He gave a hollow laugh. “Can you really see me going along there and telling everyone I’m a trainee accountant. At thirty-one.” He raised an eyebrow. “I need to get some other stuff finished. Door open or closed?”
“Keep it open. And John?”
He poked his head back into the room.
“Could you get me the files for the holding company as well please. You’ve only given me the trading company at the moment.”
“I thought that was the one you wanted.”
“No, I need them all. I’m sorry I probably didn’t make it all that clear—”
“No, that’s fine.” He blinked at me. “I should have time to do them.”
“That’s great. Thanks, John.” I smiled at him and then returned to the accounts.
Chapter 25
At Julius’s on Sunday he greeted me with a warm handshake.
“I’ve always thought this was a nice flat,” I said as he showed me into the light and airy living room.
“It suffices,” he said with a nonchalant wink. There was the sound of metal on metal from the kitchen and a strangled cry of frustration. “My cleaning lady,” he said rolling his eyes. “Look, I’ve had a busy morning, a bit of work that needed doing…” He waved vaguely at the table which was covered in papers.
“If I’m interrupting—”
“No, no. It just means I won’t be cooking for you. We can go to the Engineer down the road. Just give me five minutes to change. And have a seat.” He indicated one of the chairs at the table and I sat down whilst he disappeared into his bedroom.
As I waited I found my eyes wandering over the table before me. There were books stacked up at the far end, but covering most of its surface were scribbled pages torn from an A4 pad and, closest to me, six photocopied sheets. On them were printed line after line of capital letters. None of them grouped into words; all of them individual. I felt a sudden thrill of excitement as I looked at them; and something else too. A flicker of recognition.
Julius re-emerged, changed into a pair of smart trousers and a polo neck. “I see you’ve been taking a look at my current problem.”
“I’m sorry Julius, I didn’t mean to pry—”
“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing secret there.”
“What is it? It looks like a code.”
“We think it’s a coded letter between Veronese and Tintoretto. It’s been in the collection for years but no one’s ever looked at it properly.”
“How fascinating.”
“Kind of. I’m hoping it will establish that they collaborated on a particular painting.”
“Sounds really interesting. What does it say?”
“Ah-hah. That’s the tricky bit. We don’t know yet. I’ve been looking at it for a week now and have got nowhere and no one at the Gallery has been able to help either.”
“Well, what have you tried so far? Caesar shift? Monoalphabetic substitution?”
Julius looked at me blankly. “You’ve lost me already. What did you just say?”
I grinned at him and then had an idea. “Why don’t I give you a hand with it? I love codes. Always have. Let me have a go at cracking it.”
“Patrick I don’t want you to waste your time. You’re far
too busy—”
“No really. Let me take it away and have a look. I can’t promise anything but I’ll give it a go.”
“Gosh.” He looked stunned. “Thank you. Any sort of lead would just be so helpful. Take those copies. I can always make others.”
I took the papers and stared at the first few lines. “You know… it’s ridiculous but this reminds me so much of the book John and I picked up in Venice. That time when I... when I kind of lost it.”
“You didn’t lose it, Patrick. It was just one of those things.” He shrugged. “It could happen to anyone. Anyway,” he said curiously. “You always said that those days in Venice were a bit of a blank for you. That you don’t really remember what happened.”
“I don’t.” I felt suddenly confused. “I can’t. I mean…” My voice trailed off and then, to do something, I shrugged and laughed. The way I’d always done. I folded the papers and put them in my pocket.
The door to the kitchen opened and a tall slim woman in her mid-twenties stepped out. She was dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt. She looked exhausted yet she had a beauty about her, a certain elegance.
“I finish the washing up,” she said yawning. “You need house vacuum today?”
“No, that’s fine. Patrick this is Francesca, my cleaning lady.”
“How do you do?” I said shaking her hand. She started as though she recognised me though I was sure I’d never met her before; then she smiled at me awkwardly and looked like she was thinking of something to say.
“You help Julius with his work?” she said finally, pointing at the papers in my hand and those on the table and laughing at the same time to disguise her awkwardness with the language. I thought she was lovely.
“Patrick is going to help me with working out what the code says.” I was surprised to see Julius suddenly put his arm around Francesca and kiss her on the cheek. “Do you remember when I told you about the code?”
“Yes, yes,” she said impatiently. “Why you like this code so much?”
“Because it leads to treasure.” Julius winked at me and I laughed. Francesca broke free from his grasp and looked at him, eyes lowered.
“I go home now. I come again Wednesday?”
“Of course.” He kissed her on the lips and she smiled at him shyly, waved politely to me and then walked to the front door.
“Wow,” I said when she was gone. “She’s beautiful.”
“Is she? Really? Isn’t that strange. I think she’s a bit bony myself. And she’s a touch too obedient to be really interesting.”
“Oh right. And are you two an item?”
“Oh God nothing like that. I am sleeping with her if that’s what you mean but it’s nothing serious. I’m still seeing Madeleine after all.”
“Of course,” I said nodding. “I’m impressed.”
“It’s just double the hassle believe me. Now you put these papers away,” he said pointing to the sheets still in my hand. “And I’ll buy you lunch.”
Chapter 26
The next couple of days were busy, so I didn’t have a chance to look at the code until Wednesday evening and even then I got home from work late. I made myself a microwave meal of chicken korma and rice and went straight to bed.
I was glad it was Wednesday. The large audit I’d been working on was pretty much over and the partner, Derek, had been so pleased with the work we’d done he’d taken us out to lunch. So all that was left was the closeout meeting on Friday when the last issues would be discussed. But that should just be a formality and I smiled when I thought about it, and I smiled when I looked down at the pages of code which I’d spread out in front of me, because it made my mind buzz at the memory of seeing Julius again.
But looking at the code gave me something else as well. A kind of tingle, a prickle of febrile excitement, a shiver of passion. I had not looked at a brain teaser or a mindbender and certainly not a code for years. I felt rusty but at the same time almost giddy with excitement at the puzzle before me. The thought that I would find meaning where there was presently none, this would have been enough for me, but combined with my thoughts for Julius it made me eager to begin.
So I looked at the papers before me. Six pages, numbered so that the order was clear. Each page had twenty-five lines and each line had 39 letters; apart from the last which had twenty lines, and the last of these had 9 letters. So in total there were 5625 characters, certainly enough to work with. A code needs to be of sufficient length for it to be vulnerable. For with length comes structure and with structure repetition, and with repetition the cipher is weakened; vulnerabilities can be found and the code can be cracked.
And so the code itself. How do these things start? How did this thing start?
V E L G A S A G A I I...
Again that vague feeling that I had seen these letters before, that what I was about to do had echo in my past. But it was momentary only, inevitably swept aside by my surge tide of anticipation and the thrill of the problem before me.
V E L G A S A G A I I...
What could I tell from looking at those raw coded letters? Letters distributed as though at random. Surely nothing. No structure. No meaning. Yet there were clues even then. Even at that first sighting.
V E L G A S A G A I I...
What could those letters tell me without being decoded? They told me that just the letters of the alphabet were being used. No punctuation of course. But also there were no numbers. There were no symbols, no stars, no moons, no star signs. Perhaps this seems like no help at all but for me it was information rather than just observation. All these were employed in codes. All included for the purpose of complexity. Yet in the end they did no more than undermine the code, pointing the code breaker in the right direction. Layers of intricacy are hints in themselves; the overlaps have weaknesses that can be probed, interstices to be penetrated.
And the letters were pure and identical and unmarked. No extra flourishes on an F or a cross on the stem of an I. There were no dots above any of the letters and no bars under any others. I stared at the printing closely under my halogen bedside light. The photocopy was good and the light was pure bright white and I examined closely and found nothing. Just the letters of the alphabet.
I noted all these things carefully and locked them away for later when I might need them, and smiled to myself at my precise approach. And so to begin:
V E L G A S A G A I I...
Begin at the beginning.
Caesar Cipher. One of the simplest forms of code. The kind a child would use. Each letter of the alphabet is shifted by a set number of letters, so if A is shifted five places to become F, then B would be G, and C would be H. A simple code and easy to test. I drew a grid and smiled when I thought that my Julius was not even aware of this easiest of codes made famous by his namesake.
Since each code letter is formed by moving the same distance from its original plain text letter, by simply shifting each letter back by the same amount we could discover the plain text again. So if it were a Caesar Cipher one of these lines on the grid should read like proper Italian.
I drew my grid and wrote out the first few letters at the top and then on the next line I shifted each letter by one so that V became W and E became F. And on the next line I shifted them all once more so that W became X and F, G and carried on, cycling through till I had got back to the beginning again:
I read across the rows looking for meaning, looking for words which might show that I had discovered the secret; but there was nothing, just pieces of words, fragments of Italian, gobbledegook. I gazed at the grid but found no overriding meaning, no compelling form. This was not a Caesar shift.
And I felt relief that it was not. A puzzle should not be too easy or else it is just a disappointment. It needed to be a challenge and should not yield its secrets too easily.
So to the next step and I felt the tingle again down my spine at the thought of what lay ahead. Monoalphabetic substitution cipher. Could it be? Where each letter in the original t
ext is substituted for one other so A might become J but B need not become K, but could be S or R or B; and just because A is coded as J need not mean that J is coded as A; it could be any of the letters. But there are bounds, there are rules still, so that each original letter may only be represented by one code letter so if A is coded first as J it will always be J. And each code letter can only represent one original letter so whenever a J is seen it will always represent A, not Q and not X. It is a close coupled relationship, a one-to-one mapping, a generalisation of the special case which is the Caesar shift cipher and throwing up so many possibilities that to the uninitiated it must surely seem unbreakable. For every A has 26 possible encipherments and every B then 25, and every C 24 and so the total number of encipherments is 26 x 25 x 24.... which gives a total of 403 million million million million. This is the number of different codes available. So surely it must be impossible to break such a code? And yet I smiled when I looked at it and cracked my knuckles in gleeful anticipation. For the code was breakable. And it was breakable because of a trick, a sleight of hand which would neuter the 403 million million and so on different possibilities at a stroke. A thousand years ago this trick, this skill would have made me a sought after man and one who would have been able to name his price to governments and kings. For a device such as this was power indeed if it allowed you to read the secret thoughts of subjects and enemies.
Yet the trick is so simple and it works because all codes have weaknesses, all of them betray something and the clues are lodged in the intricacies of the language of the original text, some subtle, some blinding, clues which stem from keen observation of the code and understanding of the language it encrypts; clues like whether one letter is always followed by a particular letter, or never followed by another; whether a letter is often found to be repeated; and most of all, most important of all, most powerful yet most simple: how often does each letter appear.